Help Request: Moving a Contact from One Company to Another

Good Morning Steve,

At the moment the way you are carrying out the process is the only real option for doing it. A feature to move a contact from one company to another is one which has been requested several times from Maximizer Software.

Thanks.

Do you know if Enterprise Edition carry out company-to-company contact transfers?

This function is not available in the Enterprise edition either I'm afraid.

We use the Combine function to "copy" the Contact from the old to the new Company. We leave the old Contact in place at the old Company, but change the name from "Name" to "old_Name". That way we can do a search on the job history of the person as they move from Company to Company and gives us a way to track our interaction with them over those moves. It also gives us good documentation of agreements and discussions in case questions come up after that person has left. Think about it - if Notes are linked to Contacts, is it not better to still have the Contact in place so you can say "We discussed it with Steve Smith on Dec 3 and he agreed to the following ... and here's a copy of the email we documented the agreement on"?

Also, not all of the Notes and Documents for Steve Smith in his old Company are appropriate to have linked to his new Company.

- R.

Yes, that makes perfect sense that you would want the contact's history to stay with the original company.

When I do a Combine between a Contact and a Company, however, it integrates the Contact's data into the Company's entry. Maximizer does not make a new Contact under the Company. That's not quite what I wanted to do. I wanted a new Contact under the new Company.

Any ideas?

Interesting ...

I just checked our Procedure Manual and here are the steps it outlines to move a Contact from Company to Company, at least for Max 7. It results in a new Contact being created under the target Company :

1) Select the records for the Contact and their new Company (Edit > Make Selected List Current and check to ensure only the desired entries are
there)

2) Combine the entries (Edit > De-Select All, Select all Contact Records then last Select the Company record, then Edit > Combine Selected
Entries)

3) Clean up the data for the Contact record in the new Company (delete Documents and Notes for the other company, add/reset UDF values, etc.)

4) Flag the Contact record in the old Company as Inactive (Select the appropriate Contact record, double-click to open, change the First &
Last names to old_Name (ie “old_Sally”, “old_Smith”)

I wrote the manual and tested each step as I did, but haven't actually done this for some time so I'd have to re-do this it a test company to refresh my memory. I'd suggest you try what I've outlined, and let me know if it doesn't work.

Thx - R.

Perfect timing!

Just got a request to move a Contact and tried the above procedure. It resulted in a new Contact under the target Company and the old one still in place under the source Company, just as described above. So it works for us.

- R.

Thanks. I'll give this a try!

quote:

) Select the records for the Contact and their new Company (Edit > Make Selected List Current and check to ensure only the desired entries are
there)

2) Combine the entries (Edit > De-Select All, Select all Contact Records then last Select the Company record, then Edit > Combine Selected
Entries)

OK, I must be missing something basic. I can't seem to select the Contact record for Old_Company and the Company Record for New_Company at the same time. I first select the Contact, then try to Ctrl-Select New_Company, but Maximizer forgets my first selection of the Contact. So I am having trouble with Step 1. Argh!

I also don't understand Step 2. If I am selecting Contact and Company in Step 1, doesn't the Edit > De-Select All in Step 2 undo that? Then Select All Contact Records will select EVERYTHING in my address book, right? Clearly this isn't what you meant. The Make Selected List Current must not be working???